Skip to main content

Drying Your Eyeballs on a Towel and Becoming a Fan of Fiddlehead Ferns

On one of the days in which I accidentally dried my eyeball with a towel after my shower the pain started a thought process about hotel towels and hotel rooms that led to a sudden urge to create a poem. Energy levels being high I also decided it HAD to be a palindrome.

I first became excited by the form when I read Caroline Bird's 'Drawn Onward'. If you love poetry you have probably already read it, but if for any reason you haven't then I highly recommend you make it one of the next poems you read.

I was ridiculously pleased with myself when I created a short palindromic poem about fiddlehead ferns in summer 2020 and sort of thought it would be the only one I wrote so imagine how pleased I was to create a second! I hope it will find a home of its own, but in the meantime here's my 'fiddlehead ferns' kindly homed by 192 Poets Directory:

 

We Few Deified We Few

 

Wanting us to feast differently   

I filled a basket with fiddlehead ferns

right to the brim for you:

ostrich fern, lady fern, bracken.

Tossing their bitterness

with garlic and rock salt.

 

Look, I tell you, I have foraged

this taste for you.

 

I let lemon zest fall on

those curled caterpillars

amongst the charred green-brown leaves.

 

We do not mention

that vague muddiness on our tongues.

We do not mention,

amongst the charred green-brown leaves,

those curled caterpillars.

 

I let lemon zest fall on

this taste for you.

 

Look, I tell you, I have foraged.

 

With garlic and rock salt

tossing their bitterness;

ostrich fern, lady fern, bracken.

 

Right to the brim for you

I filled a basket with fiddlehead ferns;

wanting us to feast differently.

 

Video reading of We Few Deified We Few

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

MY YEAR IN REVIEW (#SingingAsTheDarknessLifts 114)

 MY YEAR IN REVIEW   Listening Link This morning it is raining and the almost unchilled air carries strong hints of green.   Alt text says this week’s photo is a collage of a group of people. It is indeed a collage and it is made from the photos that accompanied each blog post this year. I do like to take a look back before I look forward and I thought this would be one way of doing it for 2025.   When I was little I loved an annual. To me it was a book of delightful snippets collected together to be enjoyed in a period of time that involved a break from routine. I can picture myself reading in my pyjamas, the seemingly bottomless sweet tin, and the advent calendar that left its glitter on our fingers with all its doors open telling me that it was indeed Christmas Day. This week’s photo is like the cover of my 2025 annual.   This blog has been my way of building a good relationship with Mondays, and the fact there have been 114 episodes since Sept...
2 comments
Read more

LIFTED (#SingingAsTheDarknessLifts 108)

LIFTED Listening Link  This morning, the cool air brings the smell of hash browns as the traffic builds its familiar rush.   Alt text offers no suggestion for this week’s photo. I say it is my sister, me and my mum in the lift after coffee and before a little shopping spree. I love this moment in time from our lovely, shared day, and the fact I remembered to take a photo.   This week I learned that I am a competent pumpkin carver. Good company, a simple design idea, a whiteboard marker pen and a last-minute pumpkin purchase resulted in a Trick or Treat worthy exhibit which made me smile.   It has been like adopting a mini half-term this week... catching up with a good friend, time with family, carving that pumpkin, having a toffee apple, going to a big firework display, landing on the settee of lovely people and having a photograph taken... and perhaps there will always be echoes of school holidays even though I no longer have these as ...
Post a Comment
Read more

EVENING SUN (#SingingAsTheDarknessLifts 96)

EVENING SUN Listening Link    This morning, at ‘The Angel of the North’ the air smells of heather and lavender. Alt text isn’t offering a suggestion for this week’s photo, but I say it is Kath and me capturing a photo during a stroll by the river after the first day of the yarn show we attended at the weekend. After a full on day it was nice to walk in someone else’s city, and I love the way the evening sun makes the white on my hair glow and puts an extra shine on Kath’s blue. A moment of quiet in a busy world. I know that it relaxed me because I then became curious to look on a map to find out whereabouts in the country we were. When we drove up I was solely focused on being helpful with yarn type things and although I knew we were in Newcastle I didn’t have a clear idea geographically of what that meant. My phone map was super helpful and I realised how different it feels from turning the pages in a road atlas. Very helpful for putting it all in context especially for someo...
Post a Comment
Read more